Skylake-S is close alongside the motherboards to support them. The CPU’s desktop version comes with different chipsets while the most famous is coming under the Z170 brand.

MSI has showcased three motherboards Z170A Gaming M5, Z170A Gaming M7 and highest end Z170A Gaming M9 ACK. The last of the trio has a back plate to help the cooling.

The Taiwanese company is testing a support for dual slot Turbo M.2 memory that sits between the PCIe slots and it comes with two USB 3.1 connectors. One is a standard Type A connector that most USB drivers are using and the other is a fancy "still no devices can plug-in to it" Type-C connector.

The Taiwanese company is testing a support for dual slot Turbo M.2 memory that sits between the PCIe slots and it comes with two USB 3.1 connectors. One is a standard Type A connector that most USB drivers are using and the other is a fancy “still no devices can plug-in to it” Type-C connector.

MSI claims that it built a surge protector in your LAN card that will protect you from any 15 KV blast. We did not dare test it.

The ACK, which stands for the less catchy Killer AC 1535, is a Z170A Gaming M9 wireless card. We don’t know if the serious gamer will trust in WLan ping times and possible lag.

These motherboards will ship with the Skylake-S desktop launch. As we have reported before, Skylake S at its fastest comes with 4GHz Core i7 6700K and we expect to see it launched at the August 18 IDF 2015 at the latest. This is slightly more than two weeks away. Let's hope that MSI boards are a bit more stable than the ones that we used to use.

Asustek and Gigabyte have seen sales of their own-brand motherboards slip during the first half of the year.

According to Digitimes, each shipped about eight million own-brand motherboards globally during the first half of 2015 and are only expected to deliver 18 million units each in the whole year.

This is down from an original forecast of 20 million units each. Gigabyte is coming off the worse because of weakening motherboard shipment performance and the fact that its other product lines only performed mildly.

Asustek and Gigabyte are flat out competing aggressively over pricing and smaller companies such as MSI, ASRock, Elitegroup Computer Systems and Biostar have all seen serious impacts on their profitability.

ASRock and MSI both shipped around two million motherboards in the first half and may ship less than six million units in 2015.

MSI was able to claw back a lot thanks to its successful gaming notebook line so is not in such a dire predicament.

ASRock is pushing into the server and industrial PC industries, but is losing seeing profit fall as the two businesses so far still have not yet had any major contribution to its bottom line.

ECS already stepped out of the brand motherboard business and Biostar is expected to ship 2.5-3 million motherboards in 2015.

MSI has unveiled plenty of new products during its keynote at Computex 2015, and the company has teamed up with Corsair for its upcoming GTX 980 Ti water cooled graphics card.

Earlier this year, MSI said it had shipped its 100 millionth MSI Nvidia based graphics card and the company launched a new graphics card to mark the occasion. As Nvidia has recently launched its newest Geforce GTX 980 Ti and as the MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G with Twin Frozr V cooler is as best as you could get on air cooling, MSI has decided to team up with Corsair for its upcoming GTX 980 Ti Watercooled graphics card.

As Corsair has announced its newest Hydro Series HG10 GPU cooling brackets for Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and GTX 970 graphics cards, it appears that these were perfect for what MSI wants to have on its Geforce GTX 980 Ti Watercooled graphics card. While there are still no precise details regarding precise specifications, MSI did note that this will be an overclocking focused graphics card and with hybrid air+liquid solution from Corsair, so we are quite sure we will see some rather high factory-overclock.

According to a report from Kitguru.net, the new Geforce GTX 980 Ti Watercooled will be coming sometime in August and MSI is sure that this will be the fastest "out of the box" GTX 980 Ti experience.

Word on the street, hotly denied by MSI is that Lenovo is interested in acquiring MSI's gaming notebook business unit to raise its competitiveness. It has made an offer which has not been turned down yet, reports Digitimes

Lenovo, who is a major client of MSI's ODM/OEM business, and both sides are still negotiating over the proposed acquisition.

MSI's success prompted Acer, Asustek Computer and Toshiba to start developing such products for the market. This has led Alienware to pull finger and get more aggressive to defend its position.

Traditional notebook demand has been weakening but sales of gaming notebooks and related peripherals have been growing and contributing strong profits.

MSI may start facing fierce competition from Dell, Acer and Asustek in the gaming notebook industry in the near future and it might flog the business off while the going is good.

This would give it more time to focus more on its motherboard and server businesses and perfect its recipe for strawberry jam.

MSI has now officially unveiled its new 990FX Gaming socket AM3+ motherboard, which is currently, at least as far as we know, the only socket AM3+ motherboard with USB 3.1 ports.

The new MSI 990FXA Gaming motherboard is a part of MSI's Classic series and a part of MSI's USB 3.1 lineup which includes a total of 12 motherboards. In addition to the 990FXA Gaming motherboard, MSI also included USB 3.1 support on the 970A SLI Krait Edition motherboard.

In addition to two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, MSI's 990FXA Gaming motherboard also includes a plenty of other features including Audio Boost 2, Killer LAN, AMD CrossfireX and Nvidia SLI support, and is actually the first AMD chipset-based motherboard with NVMe support. It also features Military Class 4 components including Hi-C CAPs, Solid CAPs, Dark CAPs, SFC and Dark Chokes and more.

Unfortunately, MSI did not reveal any details regarding the price or the availability date of the new 990FXA Gaming motherboard but you can check out more details over at MSI's product page.

Ahead of the AMD's official launch of its next-generation APU lineup, codename Godavari, MSI has updated its socket FM2+ motherboard lineup with total of eight new models.

Based on AMD's A68H, A78 and enthusiast A88X chipsets, the new MSI socket FM2+ lineup will also be available in mini-ITX, micro-ATX and ATX form factors and promises plenty of features and technologies, including onboard LAN, PCI Express 3.0 x16, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, multiple display support, RAID controller and more. The entire lineup will also be using Military Class 4 components, including Solid CAPs and Dark Chokes as well as some MSI exclusive features like the OC Genie 4, Click BIOS 4 and Command Center.

The new lineup is also backward compatible with AMD's socket FM2 APUs, including Kaveri, Richland and Trinity APUs.

The top offer are the A88X-G41 PC Mate V2, based on the ATX form-factor and the A88XI AC V2 motherboard based on mini-ITX form-factor. The A88X-G41 PC Mate V2 packs single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and one PCI-Express 2.0 x4 slot, two PCI-Express x1 and three PCI slots, six SATA 6Gbps ports, support for up to 32GB of DDR3-2133 memory in two DIMM slots, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 and ten USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, DVI and D-Sub outputs as well as all the MSI exclusive features.

The smaller, and a bit more impressive, mini-ITX A88XI AC V2 motherboard packs a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, one half-size mini-PCIe slot with Intel dual band 802.11ac 7260 WiFi+Bluetooth 4.0 module, same support for 32GB of DDR3-2133 memory in two DIMM slots, four SATA 6Gbps ports, four USB 3.0 and six USB 2.0 ports, Realtek ALC887 7.1-channel audio, Gigabit Realtek RTL8111G Ethernet, and all the rest of MSI features which makes it perfect for a high-end HTPC or small form-factor gaming system.

There will be plenty of other motherboards to choose from, including single A68H-based A68HM-E33 V2, two A78-based motherboards, the A78M-E35 V2 and the A78M-E45 V2 as well as three other A88X-based motherboards, the A88XM-E35 V2, A88XM-E45 V2 and the A88XM-P33 V2.

MSI has announced the world's first USB 3.1 equipped AMD chipset based motherboard, the black and white 970A SLI Krait Edition.

Based on AMD's 970 and SB950 chipset and AM3+ socket, the new MSI 970A SLI Krait Edition is a standard ATX form-factor motherboard and features two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots for SLI or Crossfire, two PCI-Express x1 slots and two standard PCI slots. The rest of the features and specifications include support for up to 32GB of DDR3-2133 memory, six SATA 6Gbps ports, Gigabit LAN, plenty of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports as well as two USB 3.1 Type-A ports at the back.

While it does not feature USB 3.1 Type-C ports, it is still the only AMD based motherboard with USB 3.1 support. Hopefully, there will be more similar motherboards from other manufacturers as well.

Unfortunately, MSI did not reveal any details regarding the price or the actual availability date for the new 970A SLI Krait Edition motherboard, but we should see it on retail/e-tail shelves soon.

In order to properly celebrate a milestone - 100 million shipped Nvidia graphics cards - MSI has introduced a rather interesting looking Geforce GTX 970 graphics card to CES 2015 show in Las Vegas, the MSI Geforce GTX 970 100ME.

The new MSI GTX 970 100ME (100 Million Edition) graphics card is pretty much identical to the previously available MSI GTX 970 Gaming graphics card but its Twin Frozr V cooler comes with a black and green color scheme and it also features a black backplate. With the new black and green GTX 970 100ME version, MSI now offers its Twin Frozr V cooler in three colors, red, gold and green. The GTX 970 100ME will be bundled with a special gift, but MSI did not want to reveal any more details.

In addition to the green GTX 970 100ME, MSI has also showed off a new GTX 970 4GD5T-OC graphics card that will lack the backplate and have cheaper components, making it a much more affordable GTX 970 graphics card.

Unfortunately, MSI did not reveal any precise details regarding these two new GTX 970 graphics card in terms of specifications or any other details regarding the availability date or the price, but since the company showcased them at CES 2015 show, we should expect them in retail soon, most likely by the end of this month.

MSI has unveiled the latest addition to its gaming notebook lineup and the GT80 Titan also happens to be the world's first gaming notebook with a mechanical keyboard.

While MSI still did not reveal any details regarding the actual specifications of the new GT80 Titan, which will also be quite impressive, MSI did note that it will be based on an 18-inch screen and be 17 percent thinner and 22 percent lighter than its closest competitor.

One thing that MSI did reveal is that the GT80 Titan will use standard Cherry switches and standard 27mm thick keycaps.

Andy Tung, president of MSI Pan America noted that: “Performance is key for gamers and the GT80 Titan will forever change the mobile gaming experience. We are proud to be at the forefront of the gaming evolution and will continue to provide solutions that deliver the most outstanding gaming experience in the world. The GT80 Titan blends the performance of a high-end gaming desktop with the mobility of a laptop."

MSI will soon reveal more details regarding the upcoming GT80 Titan notebook at its dedicated website, and we will surely keep our eye on it.

MSI is very happy with Nvidia's Geforce GTX 970 graphics card and as it is apparently selling like hot cakes, the company has decided to launch yet another custom GTX 970 model. It will be one of the cheapest custom GTX 970 cards on the market and promises great performance to value ratio.

Spotted by Videocardz.com, MSI's upcoming GTX 970 Gaming LITE Edition will be quite similar to the already available standard MSI GTX 970 Gaming graphics card but will most likely have a lower factory-overclock and probably a limited bundle, which should make it cheaper that the aforementioned standard MSI GTX 970 Gaming graphics card.

While Videocardz.com did not reveal the precise specifications of the new MSI GTX 970 Gaming LITE Edition graphics card, it did manage to get a picture of it showing that it will still have the same Twin Frozr V custom dual-fan cooler, which is definitely a good thing as this cooler will have no problem cooling down the power-efficient GM204 Maxwell GPU.

Videocardz.com also managed to find out that MSI intends to price the new GTX 970 Gaming LITE Edition close to the reference GTX 970 card, or somewhere between US $330 and $340, which will definitely make it one of the most attractive GTX 970 graphics cards on the market in terms of value.